Today is what I call the International Day of the Cartoonist, meant to honor and remember the cartoonists Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb, all killed by Islamic terrorists in Paris on this date in 2015. Although Hoosier cartoonists have not faced anything like that, we have had in the past few months an attempt at censorship against one of them, Ken Avidor of Indianapolis. Mr. Avidor's offense against political orthodoxy involves his animated cartoon Unjabbed. Those in power cannot tolerate dissent or difference of opinion, and so Mr. Avidor's cartoon has been censored. The last we heard, Ken Avidor is working on the second episode of Unjabbed.
MIT Press recently published a book on the topic of cartoonists and censorship, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship. The authors are Cherian George of Hong Kong Baptist University and Sonny Liew, an independent artist based in Singapore. Not surprisingly, there have been attempts to censor or suppress the book, or to categorize it, more or less, as politically unacceptable. See for example "Red Lines' clumsy attempt to decry cartoon censorship ends up defending bigotry" by Caitlin Rosberg on the website The A.V. Club, dated September 7, 2021, here. The point of Caitlin Rosberg's article or review seems to be: "You should not read this book." Or, perhaps: "The authors of this book should be silenced," a curious and ironic conclusion drawn on a book about censorship.
Backdated to January 7, 2022.
Copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley
